Tuesday, 24 June 2014

"Yes I know Old Mother Blaggarty will not be pleased, but the BUF column must be stopped at all costs, and her cottage is the nearest place to where we want to build the roadblock."

"That's fair enough Your Reverence, but I'll be buggered if it's me who has to tell her!"

I thought it might be fun to knock up some improvised barricades - hastily erected from whatever furniture could be dragged out of nearby premises - and here are the results.

Most of the furniture is 1:48 scale stuff from doll's house supplier A Trifle Small - including some dark brown plastic sets (bedroom and dining room), some metal items (a tin bath, wash tub, brazier and a dustbin) and a couple of very thin plywood kits.

Added to these were some metal trestle tables that VBCF member 'Staffie' was very kindly giving away.

I originally had reservations when opening up my order from A Trifle Small, as they looked to be just that. However they're not actually too bad when compared to 28mm figures.

The dark brown plastic stuff was simply washed and drybrushed, although some of the pieces had hollow backs, which I covered up with either tape or plywood.

The metal bits were painted (with the exception of the tin bath) with various degrees of success (I'm not that happy with how the trestle tables and brazier came out).

The plywood blanket box was painted blue and then distressed with some sandpaper, while the wardrobe was dirtied up a bit, but otherwise left as was.

I based them in varying lengths (max 3" - the width of Giles' roads) to give flexibility on the tabletop, with the bin and brazier being based separately to double up as objective markers/scatter.

Regular followers of
this blog will know that I also have an interest in the Great War – more accurately,
the role played in WW1 by my ancestors.

I was interested then
to learn that my local museum is holding an exhibition entitled 'Herefordshire
in the Great War - telling the story 1914-18' and so I popped in last weekend
to take a look (and take some photos)!

Open Wednesday to
Saturday, 11am - 4pm until November 8th.Additional opening
on Sunday 9th November and Tuesday 11th November.

The exhibition can be found by going up the stair at the library and walking through the first room of the museum (which looks at various aspects of Herefordshire life throughout history and is worth perusing before you head on).

The next room, usually I think devoted to the Brian Hatton gallery (a local artist who died in the Great War), features a number of exhibits, devoted to such subjects as personal possessions of Herefordians who served in WW1, a replica Red Cross tent, agriculture and the role played by women, Rotherwas munitions factory, contemporary newspapers and Great War themed artwork made by local children.

There are lots of interesting things to see here - highly recommended!

Thursday, 5 June 2014

I recently took advantage of a month’s free membership to findmypast.com to have a good look through their newspapers archive. My aim was to find any information on my ancestors for my WW1 family history blog.

However I also found a number of articles relating to my interest in the interwar history of Herefordshire, and especially anything that could be tied in with the make-believe world of the Very British Civil War.

Now the main villain of the VBCW is Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, and through the newspaper archive I was interested to learn that, on Saturday 5th October 1935, he actually held a rally in Hereford. Here is a summary of the report, entitled ‘Sir O Mosley At Hereford’.

Please note that this is merely a précis of a contemporary newspaper report, and not a reflection of my own personal political beliefs!

It seems that the much-heralded event generated a lot of local attention, with the numbers being so large that many were turned away from the Shire Hall, being addressed instead by another speaker (it does not say who) at an overflow meeting. The reporter wryly notes that a large percentage of the audience were young women, ‘not credited with any considerable interest inpolitics’, and conjectures that they were more interested in Sir Oswald and his‘quite handsome and picturesque black shirted retinue.’

The bulk of the meeting goers, he maintains, were simply there to be entertained, although a small minority ‘drank in the leader’s words,punctuating his points with applause’. The majority were however, content to listen politely, if unenthusiastically.

Mosley, wearing a grey suit and ‘of course’ a black shirt,took to the platform alone, standing at a table draped in a Union Jack and fronted with a fasces symbol. After raising his hand in salute and apologising for being late, began a speech that would last an hour and a quarter.

Supposedly billed to give a talk on agriculture, Mosley was obviously determined to give his full manifesto an airing, for he started off by speaking out against any British intervention in what was the current international crisis at the time: the Italian invasion of Abyssinia. Any economic sanctions, he argued, would be useless without the military capability of backing them up – a capability, he believed,that Britain was lacking at that time. ‘Was there ever such folly as to bring Great Britain to the verge of war after spending the last ten years stripping her of every means of defence?’ he thundered, to much applause.

With ‘growing fervour’ Mosley hit out against the Stanley Baldwin’s government, which he believed had ‘humiliated’ Britain by cutting back on defences and merely ‘postured’ in Geneva without the means to back themselves up. He then turned his ire on the opposition, accusing any would-belabour government of calling for war on one hand while advocating universal and unilateral disarmament on the other. He summed up this section of his speech with the British Fascists’ catchphrase of the time: ‘mind Britain’s business.’

Mosley then turned to matters of agriculture, pouring scorn on the government’s attempts to stimulate agriculture via marketing boards by claiming that ‘if the British farmer got the board, it was the foreigner that got the market’.

He then outlined the essentially two-fold Fascist policy of establishing national corporations – boards made up of representatives from employers, workers and consumers – to set prices and wages as ‘science and industrial technique increased the powers of production’, whilst simultaneously banning the import of all goods that could be produced in Britain.

Farmers would be asked to plan for maximum production in return for a reduction in imported foodstuffs, with any resultant damage in the export market being compensated, he claimed, by the increased spending power of the farming community. So why hadn't these plans been implemented by the government? The answer, said Mosley, was ‘alien, Jewish finance’.

With the City of London drawing it’s interest from foreign investment and pinning it’s resources on foreign imports, national life was at the mercy of ‘international usury’ he claimed, ‘becoming more impassioned,his voice rising to a furious, almost incoherent shout’. After this climax he sat down ‘amid fairly general acknowledgement from the audience of an exceptional oratorical achievement.’

The audience was then addressed by a Mr. C. F. Wegg-Prosser,and for 30 minutes Sir Oswald answered a selection of questions, both written and from the audience. He then thanked the audience for their interest, gave a fascist salute and left the platform. The meeting concluded with the singing of the National Anthem.

It is clear that this was no Olympia rally, the scene of much violence. In the main the audience seem to have listened with polite interest, more appreciative of Mosley’s skills as an orator than his policies.

Hereford Shire Hall (right)
(Courtesy of Old Hereford Pics)

However scuffles were reported outside the meeting. A crowd had gathered to watch Sir Oswald depart, walking down the steps of the hall flanked by two lines of saluting Blackshirts. St. Peter’s Square echoed to a chorus of booing and catcalls he sped off in his car, and the police cordon failed to hold back the crowd, some of whom broke through to exchange blows with the Blackshirts as they marched out before the police regained control.

More derision followed when the Blackshirts, after having supper at their hotel, ‘departed to the accompaniment of some mild booing and the singing of the National Anthem by the crowd, in which the Blackshirts joined’.

While findmypast’s newspaper archives are not exhaustive, there is evidence that the subject of Fascism and Mosley’s visit did cause a stir – at least if the pages of the Hereford Times is anything to go by.

A fortnight later, it was reported that the Hereford Y.M.C.A. Debating Society held a debate on the subject ‘Fascism is a menace to this country.’ Proposing the motion was a Mr. W Pigott, who that Fascism glorified war and that elections in Italy and Germany were farcical and questions the freedoms of people living in those countries. He also rejected the notion that ‘Jews held the monetary power’ and concluded that while he admired Mosley, he was ‘sorry he had become a Fascist.’

Arguing the case against this was a Mr. Clement Browning,standing in for the aforementioned Wegg-Prosser. Browning accused Pigott of allowing himself to be prejudiced against Fascism by certain papers, who ‘exaggerated events in Fascist countries’. He went on to claim that British Fascism was not necessarily comparable to continental Fascism, stating that is was no more foreign than any other political party.

He also talked of how under a Fascist government, each man would vote according to his trade, electing a member of their body to put forward ‘the most satisfactory programme in things that concerned the electors.’He also argued against the case that Fascists undermined religious freedoms,stating that Mussolini and Hitler merely put an end to the ‘squabble between churches.’

‘Fascists did not like Jews’ he conceded, but did not consider them ‘the root of all evil’ and claimed that an attempt would be made to extract England from ‘the throes of international finance.’

'Under Fascist rule everything good for England would be urged forward, and all to her detriment would be prohibited.’ The motion that Fascism was a menace was carried with a large majority.

A report of an address to local trade unionists by Labour candidate Mr. George Clarke in November 1935, in which he claimed that ‘a proposal to muzzle the press was put forward by a Fascist speaker in Hereford recently',prompted a rebuttal in the letters page from one J. A. Macnab.

Macnab, admitting that local newspapers may well have ‘carried on with the British tradition’ of free press, blasted the national newspapers as being in the hands of ‘a few quick jumping millionaires’ who ‘pump their own opinions on to millions of English breakfast tables every day.’ The Fascists would counter this, he claimed, by giving the government the same rights as enjoyed by the individual to take action in the courts and impose penalties on newspapers that ‘lies detrimental to the national interest’.

The subject of Fascism and the reduction in personal freedom in Fascist countries was later taken up by Mr. J.P.L. Thomas, MP, who could not understand why any 'Englishman or Englishwoman' would wish to substitute the current parliamentary system for a Soviet or Fascist dictatorship.

The subject of press regulation and general freedoms under a fascist regime continued to be discussed in the letters page over the next few weeks, with a Mr. Walter Shawcross of the local Temperance League crossing swords with a Mr. Cuthbert Reavley and none other than the British Union of Fascists’ Deputy Director of Policy, Mr. A Raven Thompson. The debate raged for some time, before the editor concluded the correspondence on the 21st December.

No doubt the issue of British Fascism continued to be discussed throughout the interwar years, and obviously not even sleepy Herefordshire kept out of the debate. I am heartened to conclude that, while we didn’t see our own Battle of Cable Street on that day in October 1935, Herefordians responded to the Fascists suddenly in their midst in their own inimitable style – ‘booing and catcalls’ and no doubt not a little mickey taking.

Why is a raven like a writing desk? - Because, after my futile attempts to earn a living through writing, I look at them both and think 'nevermore'.

'Star Trek' or 'Star Wars'? - Neither - Doctor Who all the way.

What was the last book you read and the last you bought? Last bought and read, Working Men's Bodies by John Field.

Who is your favourite fictional character? - Rincewind.

Which historical event would you like to visit? - My grandparents' wedding in 1929.

Supposedly I must now nominate a number of blogs and ask them similar questions, but here I am going to break with protocol by refusing to highlight a selection of my favourites.

Please don't think me ungrateful, or disparaging of other bloggers' work! I believe that all the blogs that I follow are as equally deserving in merit and so instead of picking out a selection, I urge you to take a look at my profile and choose a handful of blogs that you don't currently follow.

If you like them, then by all means leave them an appreciative comment and, if you so wish, nominate them for a Liebster award :-)

Followers of our VBCW Herefordshire big games will be pleased to learn that we're planning another bash - provisionally on Saturday 27th September (subject to change).

With the civil war continuing to rage across the country, shortages abound. In Herefordshire, no faction is immune to the problems of supply as everything from petrol to artillery shells are rationed.

The Royalists and BUF at least have a reasonably secure supply route to Shropshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, but the government, content to keep the county as a buffer zone, is slow to put it's hand in it's pocket.

The Anglican League is forced to rely on a number of meandering, low capacity supply lines incoming from the Forest of Dean up to mid Wales. A significant proportion of supplies are painstakingly carried from ports in the north west, through Nationalist north Wales and down the salient into Monmouthshire. However, with Royalists from Carmarthen establishing outposts as far inland as Brecon, an alternative route must be found.

All eyes are turning from the largely stabilised front in south Herefordshire to the border country in the west, where a railway line loops from Sir Gilbert's Pontrilas to neutral Hay, and thence to Welsh-held Kington and points beyond in Radnorshire. Control of this line would greatly simplify the Anglican's supply route and bypass numerous unsympathetic enclaves in mid Wales.

However between these areas a number of strategic junctions and stations lie either under direct Royalist control, or are jealously guarded by local potentates under the umbrella of the Landowners' Protection Association.

It is clear that all local factions, aided and abetted by numerous interested parties from outside the county, must wrestle for control of the Welsh border parishes and the strategic railway line, before supplies run out...

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Disclaimer

Some organisations featured in the VBCW universe possess extreme right-wing or left-wing political views. I do not subscribe to these views, nor do I wish to promulgate them. Basically, this blog is essentially a work of fiction and no offence is intended.